Expanding Your Yoga Practice

As you continue with your yoga exercises, you will realize that your abilities increase as well. Your balance will get better, your strength will improve, and your flexibility will continue to expand. It is common to want to expand your practice with your new abilities. This can be a little difficult if it involves leaving your comfort zone. You can start by doing the advanced modification of poses that you already do, attending a higher level of classes, and you can also start on a journey towards the very advanced poses that may be out of your abilities currently.

Advanced Modification

Most yoga instructors are going to be aware of the range of abilities of their students. They prepare for this by having a number of different modifications for their commonly used poses. While some of these modifications are certainly going to be geared to those who are not as far in their practice, they will likely have several ways to make poses more challenging. This allows you, a student who is further along in their practice, to get more from the same sequence. You can talk to your instructor at a convenient time to find out what they recommend, and ways that you can push yourself further.

Higher Level Classes

At some point during your yoga journey, you will find that you just need more challenges to continue. While this can be a hard choice to make, as you will most likely be leaving an instructor and a group of people you are comfortable with, it is something that happens regularly. The new environment, including the fresh instructor, can push you in many different ways.

Goal Poses

Having a goal can help you grow your practice with a purpose. This can avoid some of the flounderings some intermediate yogis complain about. Your practice at the beginning was to get into the lifestyle and learn the basics. Once that has been accomplished, it is important to find something else to focus your intentions on.

There are some very difficult poses, which require great skill to achieve. Once you are settled into your yoga practice, you may want to set some goals that work towards these advanced poses. You can find many different guides on how to work up to poses, like the Frog pose that takes great strength and flexibility. To do this safely, it is important to listen to your body. Many of these poses are either something you can do or not do at all. With that in mind, the intermediate pose progression can help you work towards these end goals.

Your practice should lead you to continued improvement in your mind and body. Staying with the same poses and sequences can cause you to plateau on your journey. You may want to find ways to add more challenge through pose modification. However, that will only be a temporary way to keep growing. Eventually, you will have to look to more advanced classes and instructors who can further your knowledge. You can also find ways to add your own purpose to your practice by setting goals around specifically advanced poses that you would like to master. Finding your path through your practice can be done in any of these ways. Perhaps you will be able to perform some of these difficult yoga poses too, who knows? Thanks for reading!